A Bleeding Nation Poem by Mpho Ramaano

Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pistol bullets take the skies
in the red traffic lighted streets of Polokwane,
some crazy monsters flee the wheels away
leaving behind on a junction,
a trail of blood, a dead man,
who owns the fleeing car.
I take my phone,
call the cops,
they take time to come.
Come investigations, no one is arrested,
but death is registered in someone’s house.
You need no beautified coloured CV
to know those monsters are jobless.

Down Market Street
a beautiful young girl is discovered
on the roadside,
eyes wide open, no breath, no heartbeat, no pulse.
She was high on coke,
a knife-edged half bottle soaked
deep in her genitals,
trails of blood playing the art
on her cursed pretty tempting thighs.
Tumi was a registered citizen,
Voter by right, but equally jobless,
Sex trade was her job,
today it’s her death.

In Phalaborwa, Maphutha hospital,
is my badly AIDS eaten sister.
The department of death and wealth-share says,
no anti-retroviral drugs for SA children,
Dr Ma(pelo) nt(sh) o Msimang
is not yet on the dying list
nor has she a child’s life at stake.
Children are dying
like a battalion of ants
in a man’s single boot crash.
The future is ripped off our faces.

My president is busy
loitering on American golf courses,
no one can address my hunger,
nor could anyone heed my anger.
His honourable Zuma can’t feed the poor,
he is in multibillion corruption saga.
I turn on the telly or radio,
another cat and mouse trick,
Ngcuka is on the line.
This Hefer cold-mission
of a commission
is sucking us dry,
hitting hard in our pockets,
yet we continue to suffer.
Stop this Hefer cold worm,
we demand a report on the arms deal.
We can’t shut and be silent
when people continue to suffer.

Countrymen hold your cries,
don’t forget to service Mbeki’s jet,
so he can flee, jump like a cocked kangaroo
and jet to the star-flagged countries
to dine with the mighty Bush and Blair.
Hold your cries,
dry your tears,
they have turned a monotonous low lyrical note.
Hold your cries,
dry your tears.
Your president will soon jet home
To deliver a speech in the AU,
and be termed the best visionary
in the African leadership
what a compliment!
While we remain hopeless, lifeless,
jobless, homeless
and dying of AIDS.
Ours is a dying nation,
Ours is a bleeding nation.
Who is to blame?